Skiing first evolved as a means of moving about efficiently in the deep snow of the Scandanavian countries. Two skis (dual skis) were necessary as the skis were used to allow a walking motion in snow. After the turn of the century the idea of sliding downhill and being mechanically pulled up again as a recreational sport occurred to many people. For well over 100 years people had been moving about on dual skis so it was only natural that dual skis would be used to slide downhill for recreation. The technology of dual skis performance soon became specialized for downhill (alpine) skiing. In the last 30 years modern technology has been applied to the boots and bindings as well as the dual skis themselves to where today boots, bindings and dual skis perform with magnificent ease compared to the equipment of even 20 years ago.
Inventors like Jacques Marchand, May 11, 1961, U.S. Pat. No. 3,154,312, Micheal D. Doyle, Sept. 11, 1973, U.S. Pat. No. 3,758,127, Alec Pedersen, Mar. 30, 1976, U.S. Pat. No. 3,947,049 realized the advantages of a mono-ski for alpine skiing and explained many of the advantages in each of their inventions. But dual skis were well established with dual ski technology improving every year. The inventors mentioned were all heading in the right direction but none of their mono-skis were so far superior as to make a major impact on dual ski popularity. The subject invention mono-ski has the level of superiority over not only dual but all existing art mono-skis to finally bring to the skiing public the greatly increased thrill and exhilaration of skiing that a properly designed mono-ski makes possible.
To properly cover the subject, snow-boards should be mentioned. Firstly, the mono-ski of Robert C. Weber, Aug. 19, 1975, U.S. Pat. No. 3,900,204 is today considered a snow-board. As in the invention of Robert C. Weber, above, Wayne E. Stoveken, Jan. 1, 1974, U.S. Pat. No. 3,782,745, Marcel and Urs Muller, Dec. 15, 1981, U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,603, and Kuniski Kawahard, Sept. 20, 1983, U.S. Pat. No. 4,405,139, snowboards are utilized with the skier standing sideways on the board and using a technique similar to surfing and skate-boarding. This is a great advantage as children can inexpensively learn the technique on skate-boards and then later easily adapt to the far more expansive and exhilarating but more costly sport of snow-boarding. Snow-boarding is an entirely different type of alpine skiing than mono-skiing and will soon attract its own substantial share of the alpine skiing market.
There are professionals and leaders in the industry who believe it is only a matter of time before most alpine skiing will be done on mono-skis and snow-boards.